If you ever come visit me in Vermont, we are going to go to Ben & Jerry’s. My family has always done that with everyone who has never been to Vermont before. If it is a nice, summer day, we very well might go down the road to the Stowe Bike Path. Not only are these places that I am always looking for an excuse to go to, but they are things that are unique to my area. You cannot have these experiences elsewhere, so if you come to my home state, I want you to be able to check them out. If we have something that is good, I want to be able to share that with you.

Let’s imagine a scenario, however, that you come to Vermont, and I really want to take you to McDonald’s. I’m not writing this to necessarily bash McDonald’s, but you probably have a McDonald’s within five minutes of wherever you live. If you eat at the McDonald’s that is relatively near my house, it is probably going to be a lot like the one that is near your house. That can be a good or bad thing depending on how you feel about the mega chain, but if you were to eat at a McDonald’s in Vermont, you will have learned nothing unique about Vermont.

If you know anything about McDonald’s, you know that their food preparation procedures are extremely uniform. They have their work down to a very tight process, and because they are so committed to doing things the same way every time, the product is largely the same no matter which location you decide to eat at. The Vermont version will be ideally identical to any other location in the United States.

Our experience of a place is not only determined by what we eat naturally, but when you come to Vermont, you have the opportunity to do some things that you can only do in Vermont. Doesn’t it then make sense that while you are in different places, you should take advantage of these opportunities that you could not have in your own hometown or really anywhere else?

It is worth wondering why these experiences are different in different places though. There is no reason that a very fine ice cream factory could not be built in Toledo. There is no reason that you could not find a beautiful bike path in a different town with very similar scenery to what we have in Stowe.

We ignore geography in our normal lives because we have largely triumphed over any constraint that geography had even up to 100 years ago. We are no longer limited by distance. I could go to the airport today and practically go anywhere in the world in a day or two. While most of the European world never went to China and had to imagine what it was like through the stories they collected from people like Marco Polo, it would be really easy for me to book a flight to Beijing. China does not and certainly is not an unachievable destination in the modern age.

Shipping particular food is not necessarily a problem either. Consider what types of food naturally grow in a particular country and then remember that it is really easy to move just about any kind of food around the world. That’s what makes it possible for McDonald’s to operate everywhere. Even if beef cattle would not really be able to survive in a particular climate, it is quite easy to ship hamburger to wherever it needs to go. Our food is not limited by geography either. When I go to China, I can eat exactly what I have Vermont more or less (although I do understand that there are geographically different menus for chains like this, I have a feeling that hamburger is pretty universal outside India).

However, what do we lose by ignoring geography? What happens when I go to China and purchase the same hamburger I can get here?

On one hand, not very much. That is the beauty of a global economy. We have the ability to meet consumer demand anywhere in the world. If people in China want a McDonald’s, or if I want McDonald’s when I travel to China, I will not have a problem fulfilling that desire. I may not really be experiencing what is unique about China, but I am getting what I want, so some people would say that there is really no problem with this type of scenario.

On the other hand though, sticking with this culinary example even though it could apply to different elements of any culture, we lose a significant part of the adventure when we don’t take advantage of unique experiences that we can only find in certain places around the world.

My family was recently in Gettysburg, and for each lunch and dinner, we ate at a restaurant that was Civil War themed. Those are the types of restaurants that don’t exist in Vermont, so it was fun to be able to visit them. It is part of what makes a Civil War site like Gettysburg unique. They actually have attractions that are related to what makes their area different than my area.

We could have eaten at McDonald’s, but it would have not really seemed like we were anywhere different than here in our own town. It added to our adventure to try some restaurants we don’t have at home and enjoy a little bit of what makes Gettysburg in this case unique and different.

You might be sitting there and asking yourself what I am trying to aim at here. After all, it seems rather obvious. Let me try to wrap it up for you.

Until approximately 100 years ago, human history was experienced in the local area. While some people, like the aforementioned Marco Polo, went on adventures, most people spent their entire lives within a day’s journey of their immediate area. Travel was difficult, so you became very comfortable with the place that you lived. Those places began to develop their own character or culture if you will. Residents there were able to produce certain types of food because of the environment. They built their houses out of certain materials that were readily available. Their clothing was reflective of the temperatures that they had to endure. A person’s life was tied to his or her local area in multiple ways.

Traveling in that time meant that if you did have the privilege of going somewhere else, it was going to be a lot different than the place you were from. They had different conditions that shaped the formation of their culture, so you knew that you were in a different region without a doubt. Chain restaurants were not really a thing because it was not practical for them to be a thing. Wearing the clothing of the Eskimos in the Sahara Desert would make very little sense because of the different climates. We didn’t all shop at American Eagle back then.

When you went to that other place, you knew that you were somewhere different. That was not necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it was obviously a change from the norm. In that time, I would not travel to China and imagine it was just like Vermont. That would not have been the case in the way that I could find certain shared elements today.

What are the consequences of this type of transition?

First, we have lost our sense of local identity. We don’t identify with what makes our particular area unique because we are wrapped up in some type of giant cultural homogenization. When we lose our connection to the place where we are from, we are losing part of what it means to be human. We exist in a certain time and place for a reason, and we need to embrace that connection we have to the world right outside our door.

Second, we feel threatened by the world outside. Granted, we are not connected to our local identity as much as we should be because of this giant process of mass media and mass commerce, but we do cling to certain aspects of our local identity, and that can bring out really ugly parts of humanity. I never had this experience, but many of you may have moved when you were a child. From what I understand, it is hard to be the new kid in school. Why is it hard? There is a desire for familiarity that can cause children to ostracize those who just moved to town. Rather than root our identity in the time and place where we are, we define our identity as being against those who are from elsewhere. You can see this all over in a variety of different applications, but because we have less connection to the local, we still have this desire for our own time and space, but it manifests itself in keeping others out of our culture rather than inviting them into joining it with us.

Third, we lose a sense of adventure. Why do we bother traveling to new places? It is fun to see things we have never seen before. Those differences only come about because different areas have different cultures. If we entirely develop a blanket culture that is entirely the same everywhere you go, there is going to be no adventure. What is the adventure and finding out that everything is exactly the same?

For all of these reasons, we see a decline of community. First of all, we don’t connect with those around us. However, we also are afraid of those from the outside because we feel threatened that our weak connections are going to be diminished entirely by those from without. When you combine that with a reduced sense of adventure that result from cultural homogenization, I think that you can see why it matters.

These parts that make up local communities are important to the people who live there as well as the people who come to experience life there. What we do not need is more of the same. In fact, we need towns to develop their own identities. Communities have different characters, and that is not a bad thing. Rather than just look like every other town in America, it is better if the townspeople, based on their own talents and abilities create their own culture. They take ownership of the result and develop bonds based on these commonalities. When newcomers arrive, they are not a threat to the already strong local culture and are therefore not perceived as such. They may not assimilate immediately to their new culture, but people are willing to accept that diversity because of the strong local identity. They don't feel like a little bit of diversity is going to tear apart their identity. With a weak identity, a little diversity feels like danger. This is the beauty of local cultures and communities.

We hear a lot about buying local and slowing down the economy, but those are only symptoms of the deeper problem. The philosophical problem revolves around our divorcing people from their local communities. Once we bring that unification back together and restore a sense of identity based on geography, we will start to have those good things that we can share with each other. We will have more local favorites like Cheerwine or Big Red. People will be able to experience these great things when they visit other regions, and there will be a degree of adventure and newness about other places that is refreshing and desirable. We don’t do this to shut people out or build barriers, but we do it to build up from within so that those from our area and from other places benefit. It all works together in a giant symbiotic system.

I hope you have enjoyed our summer with G.K. Chesterton. As I have now completed my summer tutorial at Faulkner University, my studies are going to move in a different direction. Consequently, we’re going to move in a few different directions on this website as we go ahead, but I don’t think that we will ever leave him completely.

The final book I had to read for this tutorial is What’s Wrong with the World, and Chesterton got right down to the heart of the problem of what divided society in his day and continues to divide society in our day.

“This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim.”[1]

Chesterton uses the example of diseases and cures to illustrate this point.

“But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease.”[2]

In the spirit of Chesterton’s example, consider our American healthcare system. Some people say that single-payer healthcare would be the solution to all of the problems we have. It is not that we necessarily disagree on the fact that our healthcare system is broken, but what some people see as the way to solve the problem is exactly what other people see as a worse problem. For some, the implementation of single-payer healthcare would not cure the problem but actually make it worse. Some people believe that the implementation of this type of government-centered solution to health care would create a dilemma that is even worse than the one where we find ourselves now. Therefore, we should not aim for that.

You can apply this illustration to just about any modern political issue, but Chesterton’s point is well taken. Naturally, if I view something as a disease, even if other people think that it is a great thing, I am not going to want to move towards that which I believe is bad. After all, if I have any type of conviction whatsoever, I should be willing to stand my ground and contend for that which I believe is good while opposing that which I believe is bad.

This leads to a great deal of tension though. If you and I are aiming in divergent directions, my cure is your disease, and your disease is my cure. In our modern-day condition of habitual gridlock, this is where we dig in our heels and end the discussion. We can’t believe that some people would be ignorant as to oppose that which we know is absolutely true. We conclude that they just don’t understand what is wrong with the world because they are in fact defending that which we believe would make the world a worse place.

Step 1: Don't Kill the Common Ground

Chesterton invites us to take a step back however and consider a more fundamental question that I believe is more productive for any dialogue that we have with people who we cannot see eye to eye with on principle.

I find this approach to be refreshing because I do think when we come together with the intention of discovering that which is good and right, we began to build a vision for what we want. Naturally, there is going to be a great deal of disagreement, even in this exercise. After all, if you ask a pro-choice advocate what is right, he or she is going to say that access to abortions is right. Pro-life people will vehemently disagree with that vision of what is right.

Even in this situation though, there are some things that we can agree about. For example, I know pro-life and pro-choice people who agree that it is very important to provide support for particularly single mothers after the child is born. Naturally, these women have a lot on their plates, and helping to provide resources is something that I think we can agree is right. We may disagree a little bit on the means to achieving this end and the responsibility of private charity versus governmental programs to provide that support, but it is right to care for mothers.

Taking this perspective on what is right with the world will enable us to get things done. In this endeavor, pro-life people can see pro-choice people as allies in an endeavor to care for mothers. Yes, we still have disagreements, but we have taken the step towards that which is right. Sometimes, you have to take the victories where you can get them.

Another important issue facing our world is homelessness. Again, most people would agree that having no home is a problem and one that should be remedied if possible. The means by which that aim is achieved again differs based on the perceived responsibility of charity and government, but let’s aim towards things that you do that which is right. Let’s aim towards fixing homelessness.

That being said, this doesn’t avoid the problem of those more difficult questions. Yes, we should agree where we can. That is true. We should work together to solve problems that we realize are problems without a doubt. We shouldn’t let disagreements on other issues stop us from fixing the ones that we can work together on. That is definitely a plague in Washington, but I think it happens in our everyday lives as well. There may be someone I don’t like, and even if that person says something that is 100% true, I am going to disagree with it just because I don’t like that person. Be honest. We all know we have done that, so let’s not pretend that we are somehow above the debate that we see in our political system. Ours may be more insignificant in scale, but the problem is the same.

Step 2: Build a Vision Based on the Common Ground

There are those times when we sincerely disagree however. People in favor of abortion believe it is at a minimum morally permissible to kill children in the womb based on a decision made by the mother. People opposed to abortion believe it is morally wrong to kill children in the womb no matter what. Perhaps you think I’m generalizing here, but those are fundamentally the two main position. There is very little middle ground between these issues, so it is going to be very hard for us to find this unified vision that Chesterton suggests.

He very well may be right that the problem with the world is that we do not know what is right. I think he is accurate in that assessment. As a Christian, I believe that God’s way is the right way. There are plenty of people who would disagree with that and would conclude that God’s way is the wrong way. How do we then deal with these visions in conflict?

Chesterton makes a bold claim as to how we can argue persuasively for our perspective, and it is one that I think you may feel is somewhat out of place in contemporary America given his perspective on a more traditional role for the mother in the home, but don’t lose the forest for the trees in this passage I’m about to give you.

“Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all these pages, is this; to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl’s hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property, because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict’s; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down; and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.”[4]

It takes a great deal of thought, but Chesterton is making the claim that we can build our entire framework of that which is good by simply agreeing that one thing is good. In his example, he goes from the very simple and generally agreed to principle that it is a good thing for a mother to find her daughter beautiful all the way to the conclusion that we need a revolution in the world. You may disagree with this logic or some of the intermediate steps, but I think this is the process that we need to take as Christians when we try to help people make the world a better place and more conformed to that which God would have it to be.

There is something very significant to the fact that there are still some things that we can agree to as right or wrong in our society, and as Christians, if those things are consistent with God’s vision of that which is right, we have a hope to make our case. All it takes is one grain of truth, and if we have that, we can move in the right direction. Until our world entirely forgets that which is right and has no more desire to find anything true, there is hope.

Wrapping It Up

It is easy for people like me to become rather jaded. We see all of the insanity in the world around us, and we might feel like there’s nothing we can do to stem the tide. We wonder what is wrong with the world like GK Chesterton did, and we come to the conclusion that everything is so far gone there is no more hope.

However, I would like to propose that the battle is not done, and we do not have to surrender. I have outlined two main propositions in this article, and I think that they are what we need to do if we are going to move in the right direction.

First, we have to realize that there are things we can agree on. Let’s take those easy victories right from the beginning. We shouldn’t let our disagreements ruin the easy and obvious things that we should be working on together.

Second, we need to use those areas of agreement to build our cumulative case in areas of disagreement. Like Chesterton, we can start with something as simple as beauty and use that as a way to build towards a vision of what the world should be. Every worldview can do this, but as Christians, we are uniquely positioned with the Truth. Therefore, we do not need to fear this exercise. Rather, we can coherently show others why our worldview answers questions better and why God’s way of looking at the world is a better way than other worldviews. It provides more answers of a higher quality than any other understanding and the world.

In that way, we will indeed help people understand that which is right and properly align their aims. We can answer Chesterton’s question if that is where we focus.

If there is one thing you don’t want to do in 2018, it is end up on the wrong side of history. Although the term itself seems to be used rather loosely, the general idea is that there are some things that are right while others are wrong, and you better be sure that you affirm what you should affirm and shun what you ought to shun. However, its usage remains ambiguous and its application can either be based on wrong opinions or wrong facts.

For example, in 2014, President Obama indicated that Russia was going to be on the wrong side of history for invading Crimea according to Ben Yagoda of Slate. Matthew Avery Sutton wrote in The Guardian that because of the approach he took to discussing racial issues, Billy Graham was on the wrong side of history. In each of these two stories, the commentators are explaining why Russia or Billy Graham did things that will be evaluated as wrong when historians look back from the future. The judgments that will be made regarding these situations will show them as wanting. They may cite examples and facts to explain why their opinion on the legacy of these people turned out a certain way, but there are legitimately two sides to these types of debates.

In 2015, Linton Weeks posted a list on NPR entitled, “5 Statements On The Wrong Side Of History.” This list is slightly different because it does not make judgments about things that will be perceived as wrong in the future. It speaks about things that are factually wrong and not open for debate. For example, one statement on the wrong side of history was given by the owner of the Green River Republican, Otis White, in 1946. He said, “Man is not going to fly to the moon or invade any other planets.” There’s no interpretation as to whether or not Mr. White is on the right side of history or the wrong side of history. His prediction about the future was factually wrong.

Therefore, when we talk about being on the wrong side of history, we have to understand what we are actually talking about. Are we talking about someone who we judge to have taken the wrong position in hindsight, or are we talking about someone who made a prediction that turned out to be wrong in the future?

Let’s take the example of Russia. In 2014, President Obama made the judgment that the decision Russia made was going to turn out to be on the wrong side of history. The Russian officials who made that decision clearly made the judgment that they believed they were going to on the right side of history and made the right decision. There is clearly a moral judgment that is being made in this scenario. It is right or wrong to invade Crimea, and President Obama was claiming that in the future, the judgment of history would not be kind to the Russians.

In the case of Mr. White and interplanetary travel, there were clearly people at his time who would have presented the opposite case and believed that going to the moon was a real possibility. They obviously turned out to be right, but it is not a moral question. There is no ethical judgment made on the character of Mr. White. He may have been wrong, but we could never say that he was unethical or immoral. He was factually wrong. It is fundamentally different than the first question.

For our discussion today, we are going to be focusing on the first scenario where something is judge to be morally or ethically wrong in hindsight. It seems that speaking about being on the wrong side of history typically refers to this first case. Being factually wrong is of course unfortunate, but it is not a question of moral judgment. Given the judgmental tone that most people utilize when they speak about someone being on the wrong side of history, discussing the idea of moral judgment seems to be the more relevant issue of the day.

Will the Future Be Better Than the Past?

The fundamental problem with this concept of being on the wrong side of history is that it makes the assumption that in the future, moral judgment will be purer than it is right now. Those historians in the future who are looking back on us right now will come to the determination through their application of their own superior moral code that we were wrong while other people were right. This progressive view of the evolution of morality was strongly criticized by G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy.

Chesterton wrote, “If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?”[1] This may seem to be extraordinarily basic. It is obviously difficult to evaluate how far you have progressed if there is no standard that you are progressing towards. If I know it is 100 miles until I get to my hotel for the night, the only way I’m going to be able to tell how far I have gone is by realizing how far I have left to go. I am measuring my progress against the 100 miles I have to go until I get to my hotel.

In the same way, morality is only relevant if there is a standard. If it is right to be kind to my neighbor, then if I am kind to my neighbor six out of seven mornings in this week, I can celebrate how much kinder I was than last week when I only said hello three mornings. The standard is to always be kind, and I can tell how well I conform to that standard.

If there was no standard, however, that I should be kind, I would have no idea if I am improving my behavior. Without the standard, or if the standard changed, I would have no idea if I was doing better and making progress or if I was going in the absolute wrong direction.

Being on the wrong side of history then seems to imply that those in the future are going to judge that certain perspectives were right while other perspectives were wrong with an evolved code. President Obama is making the assumption that in the future, the historians will (shockingly) come to the consensus that his perspective was right while the Russians were wrong. I happen to agree with the President that the Russians were wrong, but it really does not matter all that much to me whether or not they are on the wrong side of history. They are on the wrong side of right now, and the wrong side of right now is the same as it was in the past and the same as it will be in the future. This phrase implies an evolution of morality that there is a perpetual enlightenment and a perpetual increase in moral understanding.

The Necessity of Objective Truth

Chesterton additionally spoke about essentially calling a spade a spade in terms of moral teaching, and I think this straightforwardness is desperately lacking in our world today. “Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”[2]

We embrace particular views because we find them to be right. Unfortunately, we are quick to affirm that our perspective may be wrong, and we don’t have the intestinal fortitude to stick with things that we know are true. Of course, I’m not talking about being absolutely closed off to anything new. However, when you have found truth, and there is no doubt in your mind that it is indeed actual truth like the multiplication tables, Chesterton is advising that you do not have to be modest anymore. You can affirm truth, and you can claim that you have found truth. This claim should be done carefully, thoughtfully and supported by the testimony of reason and reality, but in terms of our individual views, it is important to remember that we can find truth.

This is important to remember because, if we are going to say someone is going to be on the wrong side of history, we need that truth and that standard to exist. Otherwise, how can we possibly determine which side of history is right and right side is wrong? As Chesterton quipped, “The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.”[3]The idea of progress is fine, but if our moral judgment is ultimately dependent on the fact that they are going to be shown to be on the wrong side of history in the future, the question is why are they not on the wrong side of right now?

Of course, there is some kind of poetic aesthetic to utilizing a phrase claiming that someone will be on the wrong side of history, but it ultimately is a meaningless phrase. It is empty and devoid of meaning because it is ultimately redundant. Chesterton clearly illustrates that there must be some type of standard, and that standard is not going to change. Perhaps we may become more aware of the standard and realize our own shortcomings. We might become more aligned with that which is right. I think about the blemish of racism on our society. I will not say that America is perfect by any means, but it is hard to deny that we have improved since the time of the Civil War. We are not where we ought to be, but I would contend that American society is better at loving our neighbor then we were at that time when we justified enslaving our neighbor. The rightness of loving our neighbor has always been the same since the beginning of time, and we have progressed towards practicing that more successfully despite our shortcomings which remain tragically evident.

The Modern Dilemma

This is, of course, the tension of 21st-century America because we want to say that we have abandoned the standards. We want to say that we have thrown off the shackles of objective morality, and the evidence of our moral progress is the fact that we have made progress in areas of race relations for example. The standards are different today, so those people in the past were on the wrong side of history, and with our modern understanding and our rebellion against the standards those people held back then, we are much better than they were.

To this modern revolutionary, Chesterton would contend, “Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”[4] We say that racism is wrong, but we reject the idea that there is anything like objective truth. We claim a contradiction because we want to take credit for the progress we’ve made. They thought it was right, but now they are on the wrong side of history, and we know better because we moderns have a better sense of morality. Rather than comparing how well we conform to the standard of actual right and wrong, we create the standard of how well we conform to the image that we want to say we conform to.

Ultimately, in order to say that someone is on the wrong side of history, this modern, revolutionary understanding must be true. We need to embrace subjective morality, and we need to believe that through the evolution of morality itself, even though things might have been believed to be right in the past, they are not right anymore.

It requires the absolute rejection of any type of objective standard because if there is such a thing as objective truth, then being on the wrong side of history is irrelevant. Historical judgment does not matter. You are on the wrong side of right and wrong from the beginning to the end regardless of what the historians say in 50 years. There is not a separate set of criteria for being right in the past but wrong now. Even if we align with the objective standard more genuinely than we did in our history, this is not because our moral sense has evolved. We recognize human fallenness, and we recognize that we do not live the way we ought to all the time. Our mission is to continue to become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, and in doing so, we line up with that standard that is the same forever, the Alpha and the Omega.

In our modern age of social media, you can learn a lot about someone without ever really meeting them. The minute someone accepts my friend request, they can learn some highly personal and controversial things about me. They immediately have the ability to know that I am Christian, I do not identify with either major political party and one of my favorite songs is Africa by Toto. This type of introduction is much more personal than any other method of meeting someone in the past. Fifty years ago, I might go to a dinner party and meet someone that I had never encountered before. Unless it was a highly specific setting for a specific purpose, the first thing I learned about that person would probably not be their deepest convictions and allegiances. We would probably start by talking about our families, sports, the weather or how we unfortunately got invited to this dinner party that we felt obligated to attend. We would have a tendency to start with pretty basic information, and as our relationship became more developed, we might then advance to more serious topics. Once we understood, based on the direction the conversation was heading in, that we were in the presence of friends, we might be willing to touch on more difficult issues because we understood that it was safe to discuss difficult topics with nice people.

Advancing to that stage of the conversation did not mean that we always agreed. In fact, we might say to our spouse on the way home, “I met John. He was a really nice guy, but I can’t believe that he supported that candidate last election.” In this rather simple exchange, there are a few important features. First, we had a personal connection with John. We got along good enough to have our conversation and advance to a level where we introduced a controversial topic. The connection came prior to the controversial topic. Second, we are quite aware that we might meet John again. After all, we apparently have a mutual friend who invited us to this dinner party. There might be more dinner parties, barbecues or picnics in the future, and we might see John again. Like it or not, he is a member of our community, and we understood that there were areas of divergence. We understood that we didn’t agree on everything, but we simultaneously understood that we might have to see him again.

Check My Profile

Compare that to social media. You see my Facebook profile, and you might know very little about me to begin with, but all of a sudden you know an awful lot about me. There are some things about me you might not like. You might have very strong antagonism towards Africa, and you might determine that we cannot be friends if that is representative of my taste in music. Never mind that we might get along very well as friends, but you know my highly personal taste in music, and you might write me off as one of “those people who like retro music.” You know you can’t be friends with one of those types of people.

You might be reading this article, and you might think of times that maybe you have done this in your own lives. I know I often times catch myself thinking, “I met this person, and we got along really good. However, if I only knew them by their Facebook profile, I don’t think I would like them very much at all. We’re just too different and have nothing in common.”

The difference is that, like my example of the dinner party, I have met these people in real life, and I know we are friends. I know that we have things in common. I know that when we were first introduced, we didn’t talk about anything controversial, but we became friends because of baseball or a love of history. I know there are differences, but I still consider them my friends because I know the bigger picture of that person’s personality. I know they are not just what articles or memes they share on their Facebook profile. They are much larger in my mind than the limited scope of their Facebook profile.

However, let’s advance this argument one step further because it is relevant in our age of social media. We tend to get kind of uptight about things that people post on their pages. However, we get uptight often times these people that we barely know. We have all of this controversial knowledge about them, but, in our world of social media, we often times don’t really know them. That causes us to write people off really quickly. If we only know them based on their social media presence, we are going to start writing them off, ignoring them and instead gravitating towards our own safe echo chambers. Because we have no relationship with these people beyond social media, we reject them as one of “those people” and instead listen to the voices that we prefer to listen to. We need to comfort our delicate ears.

Is it any surprise then that we have such a culture of toxic discourse? We establish no relationship with other people yet expect to be able to be able to civilly discuss difficult topics. That’s tough. We then might still try to discuss difficult topics with people we hardly know, and because there is no relationship to fall back on that reminds us that we actually like some of these people, we lump them all into a highly stereotyped and artificial group of “those people” who we subsequently isolate, stigmatize and ultimately ignore. We deny that their views have any value, and we continue to embrace our squad online because we can. On Facebook, it is really easy for me to block people I don’t like and highlight those I do. It is a large world, but I actually built myself a prison that makes this large world smaller than the world I would encounter if I just went and talk to my coworkers in the office.

I write this in 2018 in the midst of my own technocentric culture, but I also write this with full recognition that I am not the first one to recognize that when I try to make my own world bigger, all I really succeed in doing is finding excuses to justify why I am actually going to make my world smaller. I say that I want to encounter people of all different types and ideologies, but I am actually looking for people who are fundamentally more or less like me.

G.K. Chesterton's Remedy

G.K. Chesterton may be best known for his masterpiece, Orthodoxy, but some of you might not realize that this masterwork was actually written as a sequel to an earlier book. Heretics presents a collection of essays in which Chesterton, to put it rather crudely, demolishes many of the most popular ideologies of his day. George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling are just a few of the intellectuals who present arguments that Chesterton evaluates and ultimately dismantles with his own blend of wit and simplicity.

He understood the value of first of all developing relationships with people before advancing to more controversial topics. For example, in the opening chapter of Heretics, he provides his evaluation of Shaw. “I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic—that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong.”[1] He understood that he didn’t have to reject Shaw as a person, and he apparently had some relationship with him on a friendly level. He just happened to find his philosophy far off base. In fact, he had a similar thing to say about Kipling. “I am not concerned with Mr. Rudyard Kipling as a vivid artist or a vigorous personality; I am concerned with him as a Heretic—that is to say, a man whose view of things has the hardihood to differ from mine.”[2] He admired Kipling’s writing and personality, but his view of the world was simply incorrect.

We seem to be losing this capacity in modern society, and I think that a large reason why is because it is so easy to find other people who share our opinions. We don’t want to go through the difficulties of actually having friends who might be different than we are, so we go to Facebook and follow Occupy Democrats or Breitbart. Our preconceived notions are not going to be challenged there since they may already align with our political ideologies.

However, in these groups we create, we might have members from all over the country or all over the world. We can say that we have a diverse group of friends, but that diversity is largely a myth. They may be diverse in just about every way except for ideologically. They may look different, speak different languages or have different hometowns, but in these groups we create, they are largely ideologically uniform. A Republican from Alaska is probably going to be a lot more ideologically like a Republican from Georgia than he is like his Democratic neighbor in Anchorage. However, in just about every other way, the two Alaskans are going to be much more alike than the Republican in Georgia. They are just not going to realize that because they have already built boundaries on ideology that divide neighbor from neighbor.

Chesterton realized this as well in his essay, “On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family.” He understood that communities are things that bring together different people who have to somehow figure out how to get along despite those differences. He wrote, “There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.”[3]

As an illustration of this type of microcosm, I could go to my office of approximately fifty people and find people who voted for Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson or other third-party candidates. How do I know this? I have had these conversations with my coworkers. We have built relationships through working together where we have the appropriate level of familiarity to sometimes talk about difficult things. I feel comfortable talking to them, and they feel comfortable talking to me. Because we have to coexist in our small office community, we have experienced the benefit of a larger world that Chesterton mentions. I’m not in my own echo chamber of Christian conservatives. I’m hearing why some people might have chosen to vote for someone else. I’m hearing why some people might not want to go to church. I’m hearing why some people feel that they are spiritual but not religious. I have a larger world because of these people I interact with on a daily basis, but we were not put in this community by choice. In this small community, we were brought together by virtue of employment, but it is quite a bit like moving into a neighborhood where you don’t know anybody. As Chesterton wrote later in the same essay, “A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises.”[4]

This may sound troubling for many people out there today. This isn’t safe. This isn’t the type of world where I can be comfortable in my own ideas. That is true. There are threats that inherently accompany having your ideology challenged. You might learn that you have something wrong. You might have a misunderstanding or a weak point in your own worldview. That is going to be exposed in this type of environment where you’re actually in the larger world of the small community.

However, as Christians specifically but really as human beings in general, if truth is important, coming to a better understanding of truth is valuable no matter how uncomfortable it is. As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Truth, and if our mission is to continually draw closer to him, then if we have something wrong (based on our own fallibility rather than God’s), it is good to experience that discomfort. It helps us draw closer to Truth which is indeed Jesus Christ.

And, as Chesterton would point out in his direct rebuttal to the philosophy of Kipling, the only way to truly learn something about a particular culture is to spend time there and become a part of it. You are not going to learn anything by going through and browsing. Just like you cannot learn everything you need to know about someone from a Facebook profile, you cannot learn everything by being a tourist. “He has been to England a great many times; he has stopped there for long visits. But he does not belong to it, or to any place; and the proof of it is this, that he thinks of England as a place. The moment we are rooted in a place, the place vanishes.”[5]

Some Practical Conclusions

In our age of social media, it is far too common for us to “visit” other people. We look at someone’s Facebook profile, and we never really get to know them. We make instant judgments about what they must be like because of what they post or share. However, in my experience, there is something to be said for easing into relationships with people. Before diving into the most difficult topics with people we hardly know, how about we try to get to know them first? By doing that, we’re going to make people much larger than they are on their Facebook profile, and that is a good thing because, as Chesterton pointed out, you are probably going to find a larger world in your workplace then you will by retreating into a shriveled echo chamber that you have created with people who think just like you online.

This is a frightening prospect, but if we are truly committed to pursuing Truth, which as Christians we ought to be, this is part of the mission we ought to be on. Yes, we’re going to find a lot that is objectionable and have to be very careful to guard our own hearts because we certainly do not want to fall away from our faith, but if we are truly going to be the light of the world, then the people around us need to see us.

I suggested some best practices for straight communication on Wednesday, so I thought that I would take this post to share three of the worst practices for straight communication if we are trying to avoid talking past each other. Especially as Christians, if we’re trying to share something really important like the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then we certainly want to make sure that we do our best to not only communicate clearly but avoid confusion.

First, it is a really bad practice to argue just for the sake of arguing. This often times leads to contradictions. We sometimes take our arguments too far. We argue our case to the point where we have greatly overstated what we can reasonably defend. This is akin to the Christian who argues that atheists cannot be moral. It can be argued that atheists have nowhere to ground morality, but it is not reasonable to argue all the way to the point that atheists cannot be moral. We may argue just argue, but it will not help our case.

Second, it is a really bad practice to fall into matters of semantics for no reason. This can sidetrack an argument really quickly. Definitions matter, and it is really important to make sure that we know the terms and the issue we are addressing. However, I have seen many great arguments derailed because some tangential word choice is taken out of context and used to push the entire argument off the deep end. If someone makes one strange word choice that really is not vital to the argument and really does not affect their argument in any way, I don’t know that we should derail a conversation over something like that. Sometimes we have to get very specific, but other times, it really will not help advance our conversation I had whatsoever. As an example, if I am having an argument with someone about the American Revolution, and they are continually talking about states instead of colonies, I could call them ignorant for lacking basic knowledge of American history, but at the end of the day, unless we are arguing over something that is specifically related to the difference that word choice would make, I probably shouldn’t derail our conversation by saying something ridiculous like, “I don’t even know why I am debating with someone who can’t even tell the difference between states and colonies.” We have all seen arguments like that, but that stops the discussion without addressing whatever topic you were actually talking about. It is not useful.

Finally, as Christians, this one is 100% necessary. If we are not communicating with love, then we have failed. This is somewhat the opposite of what I mentioned on Wednesday that where I spoke about the necessity of good intention. If our purpose for engaging in conversations especially about Jesus Christ but really about anything is not a good purpose, then we have problems. We are going to end up in a very emotionally unhealthy spot in our conversation, and I am willing to bet that it will probably spiral into a battle of personal insults. If our intentions are not good and we are not trying to point towards love and truth, I don’t know that anything good is going to happen.

Public discourse is a tricky business, and our culture does not seem to be getting any better either. Rather than actually engage, we talk by each other. I hope this miniseries sheds a little bit of light as to where I am coming from and demonstrates some of the things that can maybe make this a little bit better for all of us.

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Exploring the Reason for the Hope That We Have

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Take a 30 day journey through the Bible and reflect on what it means to be a Christian in modern society. This devotional will encourage you to consider the reason for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.